KINNA THOMAS: CORPORATE EXECUTIVE AND ENTREPRENEUR
BY ZERLINE HUGHES SPRUILL
W hen the late Wesley
of her future–and her family’s legacy–becoming the first to go to college. “I had a lot to prove so I came out swinging, with straight A’s,” said Thomas who immediately earned a UNCF scholarship after her first semester. “I had too many people invested in my journey. My parents didn’t have a lot of money. It was the community support that helped me get through that first semester. I went in hustling and kept that spirit.” Fortune 500 Status Provides Instant Credibility to Lane Alumna Thomas’s hustling spirit, kind demeanor and leadership prowess afforded her the opportunity to receive two post- graduate degrees from Webster University and climb the ladder to earn executive retail positions at corporations that every American household knows and loves: Target Corporation, Walmart and CVS headquarters, where she currently serves as vice president of merchandising operations. Thomas said instant credibility comes with the territory of having such a portfolio, but it also comes with a price.
“There are layers and layers of complexity to this, especially for Black people,” she said. “There’s a lot to bearing the responsibility of being with a company that’s large because you represent the company in everything that you do. With respect to your personal life, there are things you have to do to be very guarded. From a personal perspective, while it’s super cool, you have to be very intentional about managing all of it. I’m the queen of this. I’ve mastered this thing around finding that line between your natural authenticity and who you are, and who people see you as being the ‘next big thing.’” Thomas’s work involves researching, negotiating and buying products from brands– including growing businesses and entrepreneurs–to feature on the shelves of the corporations she works for. In order to do this with precision and success, Thomas has worked at becoming an expert in customer behavior, brand positioning and sales. “This experience has really grounded me and allowed me to learn very different things about specific categorized nuances,” said Thomas. “When you put me in a room, I can talk about literally
any product, its price points, how to double down, sourcing.”
Cornelious McClure, former president of Lane College
called Kinna Thomas, he had to hard-sell her into enrolling. Thomas had already decided what she would be doing after high school graduation. At age 16, the St. Louis, Missouri native was the youngest McDonald’s manager in the region. Her plan was to continue at McDonald’s full time and quickly work her way up to owning and operating several franchises in the state. Thomas’s parents and grandparents were entrepreneurs, and she knew what it would take. It was an iron-clad plan. A friend who attended Lane College had other plans for her, however, and arranged a call with the school which was immediately escalated to President McClure. “He said, ‘young lady, I think you need to give Lane College a try. I’d like to speak to your parents and learn a little more,’” recalled Thomas. “I said, ‘we don’t have the money for it.’ He said, ‘when you get here; and if you do all the right things, we’ll get you taken care of.’” That conversation took place in June 1996. By the end of July, Thomas’s bags were packed, as she changed the trajectory
Thomas’s most widely known project to date occurred when she was the senior cake and pie buyer for Walmart. She masterminded the sweet sensation all of America knew as “The Patti Pie.” Officially sold as Patti Labelle’s Sweet Potato Pie, the brand that went viral continues to grow in its ninth year, long after Thomas’s brainstorm of lending her very own family’s recipe to help boost the Grammy Award-winning singer and actresses project. The pies broke history in grocery retail; and at one point, Walmart sold two pies per second. “Kinna embodies leadership. It is what has made her successful as an executive and what engineered the Patti Pie phenomenon,” said long-time friend, fellow sorority member and Lane College classmate Sheneka Balogun, Ph.D. “She found another piece of Patti that we didn’t know about that would take the Black community by storm. Kinna has always done that–on our step team at Lane, as president of [Alpha Kappa Alpha] Beta Chi when she was a junior, as a tutor, with her kids.”
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